Here we are in Spring and we are in the first week of our Detox at Equinox. So this week we will be looking at the four types of toxins in Ayurveda and the kinds of things you can do to clear them out. This is a good time of year to do this because the channels or nadis, as they are called, that run all through your body are open at this time of year so you can get in and clean them out. It’s the time of year to release the sluggishness of winter and get ready for a new growing season.
Ama
Ama is the first kind of toxin and it means ‘that which has not been digested’. So this means everything that we take in and don’t process. This can be thoughts, movies, emotions, food, sounds, screen time, drugs, alcohol, learnings, trauma or anything else we consume. It hangs around in your body and slows you down. It’s the stuff on your tongue in the morning, the phlegm in your throat, stuffed sinuses and general undigested gunk in various parts of your body. It is sticky, sludgy, cold and stuck. It is water soluble and results in tiredness, stiff muscles and inflammation. You can also detect it if you have a strong body odour, brain fog, diarrhoea, constipation, depression, poor immunity, weight gain or dullness.
We can flush it out with things like juices, warm water, simple food that is chewed well and eaten in modest amounts, exercise, sweating, massage and plenty of time between meals to digest. We increase it by overeating, not chewing and not digesting before adding more and more stuff into the system. This is like dumping the kitchen trash in the body.
Ama Visha
If we leave that trash lying around it starts to ferment and it becomes hot, sharp and mobile and it turns into ama visha which means poison. This is fat soluble and it gets into the deepest of tissues and it starts to cause disease.
Symptoms depend on where it settles in the body and the doshas that are at play and the dhatus or tissues that are involved. Symptoms may include things like diarrhoea, loss of appetite, being overheated, skin diseases, kidney dysfunction, liver problems, heart disease, and mental and emotional turmoil.
This can be cleared with food, oleation, herbs and other Ayurvedic treatments. Oil pulling, oil massages and good quality oil in your food can all help.
Garavisha
The third type of toxin is Garavisha or environmental toxins. These can be experienced in the head or body and can result in skin problems, sweating, heart problems, food cravings, immune disorders, fatigue and heaviness in the body.
It can be hard to spot it and determine exactly what is making us feel off colour because we are bombarded with thousands of potential toxins every day. Some people have more toxins in their environment than others and some people are more susceptible than others. These all have to be detoxified by the liver. In short, many of us have overloaded livers.
This is a slow accumulation and become chronic diseases.
They lurk in the 5 elements:
Water: is either contaminated or chlorinated, so a filter is a good solution.
Earth- it is found in the soil, the food we eat and even built into the buildings we live in. It’s in our toiletries, our skin care products and cleaning things. In short it is readily available everywhere!
Fire - the ozone holes do not help!
Air and Ethers- Our thoughts can be toxic, there is air pollution, noise, white noise, other kinds of noise.
Cleaning with non-toxic products, airing your house, having air cleaning plants, and filtering your water are all good practices.
The fourth kind is all about electromagnetic toxins and radiation.
Electromagnetic fields (EMF) and electromagnetic radiations (EMR) surround us all the time in the form of phones, microwaves, computers, television, appliances and of course wifi.
Symptoms can include fatigue, disconnection between mind and body, dullness, lack of enthusiasm, feeling sad or negative, change in appetite and cravings, neurological problems, disturbed sleep and disrupted digestion.
The pulse of people who suffer from this is grounding:
Hug a tree, go barefoot, go swimming in a lake, care for vata dosha and get in a routine. Choose things like buckwheat, asparagus, sea greens, cilantro and leafy greens.
Tips for cleansing and releasing the toxins
To support the liver choose bitter things like greens, bitter melon, asparagus, daikon radish and beets and green. Do not choose one of the extreme liver cleanses, these can be very harmful.
To bind the toxins to give them an exit vehicle, choose things like barley, millet, horse gram lentils, moong dal and all kinds of beans.
Plenty of warm water and heating spices can help to move them if they are stuck. Things like ginger, ajwain, cumin, nigella seeds turmeric can help to flush the toxins.
Triphala is a good all purpose herb that can help too.